EAT, PRAY, LOVE

A supermodel turned yogi uses unusual methods to enlighten clients

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For 20 years I've lived in the same large, lovely, light-filled, prewar, Upper East Side studio facing Manhattan's Second Avenue—a spare space, furnished with a few midcentury modern pieces and artworks. I take pride in my unencumbered existence because, even before an old love's recent death, my grandmother's passing, and losing a close friend to cancer, I felt the emptiness of things and the weight of stuff, and I've wanted to be able to make a clean getaway.

Look up and you'll see me standing in the five-foot-high windows, keeping an eye on the world three stories below, watching people, gazing at the 59th Street bridge, checking traffic, and looking to see if there are any empty cabs available. I'm not going anywhere, but I find them somehow soothing.

From one of the window latches I hang a small mirror to apply my makeup. Not long ago, while plucking my eyebrows, I saw a woman, a bouquet of purple tulips in hand, run across the street on a yellow light and get hit by a truck. The driver, not seeing her, hadn't braked as he approached the intersection because he'd known the light would turn green by the time he crossed. It was so fast. Where had she been going? Home? To see a friend? Why was she in such a hurry? Was she in a hurry? Or was it just, I can make this light....

From my watchtower I could see that she was gone, that she actually didn't know what hit her. The words massive head injury came to mind. The driver pulled over and sat on the curb on his cell phone, crying. The police came to interview him. The ambulance came to take away her body. The firemen came, removed the manhole cover, turned on the hose, and washed her brains and the flowers down into the dark. The next day when I looked out my window it was as if nothing had happened.

Like ivy, a sadness had been creeping up on me for months, maybe years, and now, this expiry plays on a loop in my head. With every rerun I recede further into an existential funk that, while poetic in a teenager, is not so attractive in the middle-aged. I safeguard my friendships and family by staying away. I become so sight unseen that I exist only on paper, when published. Which means I haven't existed since last April, because the thought of writing anything—a grocery list, a check—overwhelms me. Even leaving my apartment has become an ordeal.

Concerned by my disappearing act—and in need of my next column—my editor Rachael sends me an e-mail: "Dear Holden, Since you won't go on a Beauty Adventure, the Beauty Adventure is coming to you." What? I skim the attached pitch letter: "Cameron Alborzian is an ayurvedic therapist who was one of the hottest male supermodels in the late '80s...moves in with patients to help cure them of ailments or simply teach them how to lead a healthier lifestyle...." I mean, come on, for real? Rachael signs off, "He arrives tomorrow morning." Oh. My. God. I have not had a man in this apartment since...since gas was $2.19 a gallon.

The phone rings. It's him. I explain this week won't work for me because I need to clean (i.e., lose 10 pounds, get a head transplant) and maybe we could meet next year. In a deep, British-accented voice he commands me not to touch a thing: "I need to see exactly how you live in order to help you." My cellulite giggles. My dust mites cheer. He says he's e-mailing a questionnaire and I shouldn't drink coffee or eat before he arrives, and oh, "You have a spare bedroom, yeah?" Honey, if I had a spare bedroom, I'd be sleeping in it. "Not a problem," he says cheerily. "I've slept on the floor in India next to five people."

That would be in Kerala, India, the birthplace of yoga and ayurveda—a 5,000-year-old system of medicine (the world's oldest) that eschews Western practices of pill-popping and surgery for a program of diet, herbal treatments, and yoga to keep the body and mind healthy. In Sanskrit, ayurveda means "life science" and is based on the theory that, as in nature, the body comprises three elements, or doshas—vata (air), pitta (fire), and kapha (water/earth). Everyone has a unique percentage of each dosha governing his or her nature, with one more prominent than the others. Roughly speaking, pitta people tend to be intense, intelligent life-grabbers. Kaphas are unflustered, nurturing types, and vatas are mutable movers and shakers. An imbalance in your inherent dosha state manifests itself in psychological and physical symptoms forewarning illness.

Hence Cameron's exhaustive questionnaire, which will deduce my dosha and any disparities, with queries ranging from the mundane (eating, sleep habits) and the personal (medications, menstruation) to the embarrassing (urine, stools) and the unimaginable (exercise, sex).

I fill it out, hit send, and run off to buy an AeroBed, squashing an anxiety attack with a pep talk that stokes my apathetic sadness into energetic cynicism. A supermodel guru? Yeah, right. Come to mama, mister. This column's gonna write itself.

He's early. I buzz him in, annoyed that I didn't have time to curl my lashes. As I open the door, my eyes do a boing! He's the guy in Madonna's "Express Yourself" video! I run to my Mac, YouTube it, and scream, "I'll be Madge and you be you!" But Cameron, clearly more grown up at 41 than I am (okay, was), gets down to business. He takes my pulse: "A bit high." He checks my eyes: "I'm looking at the whites, the size, coloration...." He is half-Persian and half-British, and his eyes are soft brown and clear, kind, and unblinking. Cameron radiates warmth and a Gandhi-like calm (had Gandhi had been 6 feet with 12-pack abs and modeled for Versace, Armani, Chanel, Gucci, Guess, and Dolce & Gabbana).

"Your skin is a bit red, which tells me there's something going on with your digestion," he notes. "Show me your tongue." It occurs to me how crazy looking tongues are, and I can't open my mouth. "Come on," Cameron coaxes. "We're going to be living together." I stick out my tongue. "From your questionnaire I surmised that you are a pitta with an air imbalance. The lines on your tongue confirm that, as do the ridges in your nails. An air imbalance makes you more anxious, more nervous with some depression, doesn't allow you to sleep"...repels men, makes me late on deadline and wanted by the IRS....

"Your eyes are a bit reddish and yellow," he continues. "This indicates that there's stuff going on in your colon." Cameron scans my eating habits. "Eating malt balls for breakfast," he says, shaking his head in disapproval. "Candy messes up the pH of your stomach. The fact that you make these choices to eat sugar and drink coffee—your mind wants them; your body doesn't. It's screaming, `No more!' " He must be hearing my neighbor's body, because right now mine is hollering, "Let's go to Starbucks!"

"You're being ruled by air at the moment, so earth is more of the element that you're missing," Cameron says. "Earth makes us more rooted. Air makes us flighty. Air's one job in the body is to move downward. Once it starts moving up into this area"—he presses a hand to my chest—"you're going to get headaches, insomnia, poor digestion, constipation. Which is what I'm seeing in you now." Lovely.

We go shopping for herbs and foods that will get me grounded, engaging in a karmic conversation on the way. I always assumed there was good and bad karma. But Cameron explains, "Karma is neutral. The karmic world doesn't know good or bad, just action and reaction. You throw it, and it comes back to you and teaches you the lessons you need to go through. Once you've learned everything you need to learn in life, it's time to go." I think of the woman who was hit by the truck. Did all her life's actions and reactions lead her to that end, or was it a few lousy precious seconds, too few or too many, debating which flowers to buy?

Cameron gets my drift to the Isle of Dark off the Rumination Coast and says, "People fear death. But there's nothing sad or scary about death. To a yogi it's just, `Oh, time to go.' " His expression is so serene and beautiful and sure, I could almost break free from my parochial school precepts and drink from the karma cup. Almost.
We arrive at Kalustyan's, a landmark Indian and Middle Eastern grocery that sells 361 medicinal herbs for whatever does and doesn't ail you; 119 incenses; 103 floral waters, extracts, and bitters; jaggery, a bizarre-looking unprocessed brown sugar; and seven kinds of ghee, a clarified butter worshipped for its catchall healing properties relating to the body's seven dhatus, "that which binds together": plasma, blood, muscles, fat, bone, marrow, semen.

Five o'clock is ayurvedic dinnertime—eating late hampers digestion and puts pressure on the organs. We stop off for Indian food, making me feel like I'm in Florida with my parents, eating the early bird special. Only we're in Manhattan, and eating birds, or anything with a heartbeat, is a karmic no-no. "You wouldn't eat your dog or your cat," Cameron says. "Why would you eat a cow or a pig?" Because they can't fetch and won't use a litter box.

"Fruits and vegetables in season have the highest nutritional value," says Cameron, who eats "one, maybe two" meals a day. He orders basmati rice with our curried veggies because it's easy to digest: "Brown rice is what they use to make the strongest glue—think what that means to your colon." As for booze, "Alcohol toxifies the blood," he says, tearing the cocktail menu from my grip. "And it's a stimulant, which is the last thing you need."

Were he any less attractive, would I be such a good girl and do as I was told? Or would I smile and say, "Listen, mister, this is my Beauty Adventure, and you're just in it," and then order a dirty martini with extra olives? But in this case, beauty is truth, and truth, beauty: He believes in what he's doing, what he can do for others. That he gave up a lucrative career (and coffee, meat, champagne, aspirin, and Twizzlers) makes him more beautiful still.
And insane.

Back in my apartment, Cameron sets up his massage table and hands me strips of cloth to fashion into a bikini while he goes into the kitchen with his bag of oils and elixirs to heat the ingredients for my karna purana—a nerve-calming procedure. I lie on a towel on the table, and he turns my head, slowly pouring warm oil into my ear, sending shivers down my body. He massages the marma points in my scalp to further relieve tension and, after five minutes, turns my head and pours oil into my other ear. More chills. In a word: ear-otic.

I digress into stress, fretting over how I'll fall asleep without an Ambien and a glass of wine the size of a bottle. "My priority is to get you sleeping well," Cameron says, announcing a 10 p.m. lights-out. "If you don't sleep well, you won't be balanced and the body won't be right-minded." No, it will be standing at a window, staring at a ghost, humming Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" with creditors howling at my door.

As we tuck into our respective beds, I'm wide awake with the unusualness of having a man spend the night. A stranger, no less. I mean, just because Cameron's beautiful and Keralasmatic doesn't mean he might not be...dangerous! Ooh, wouldn't it be great if he were? Like, Harlequin romance–dangerous? Then again, he could be Lifetime movie–dangerous, in which case my lifetime would be in danger. But I'd get to have sex before I died. I should put on some music.

I ask Cameron to tell me a bedtime story about a man who morphs from a supermodel into a superguru. He takes me back to 1986, when he was a college freshman in London. An agent spotted him on the street and persuaded him to run off to Paris, where a month later he was strutting the runway for Gaultier "wearing spandex and high heels. I was like, `Yeah, I've found myself!' " He chuckles in the dark. After a decade making beaucoup bucks, he quit to go really find himself. The spiritual influence, then death, of a close friend and mentor led him to India, where over the course of seven years he studied, leading him to where he is now, sleeping on my floor. He moves in with clients for as little as 24 hours and as many as 21 days, charging on a sliding scale. "I never enter someone's life who isn't looking for change," he says. Even if her editor sent him. That's karma, baby.

I sleep. I dream. I wake to find the dream looking at me from between his legs in a downward dog position on a yoga mat. What time is it? "Five a.m.," he whispers. "Sleep some more." No problem. An hour later, Cameron hands me a cup of warm water "to clean your system" and takes me into the bathroom to instruct me in nasal douching, a morning practice that relieves allergies and sinus headaches, and leaves you with a keener sense of smell. In a cup, dissolve a pinch of salt in a few tablespoons of water. Pour a bit in your cupped hand, lean over, and channel Liza Minnelli circa 1982 at Studio 54, Hoovering it up into your nostril, pause, and blow it all back out. Repeat other side.

Next he teaches me some meditative breathing and specific yoga postures that will center me and aid deep sleep. In lieu of coffee, he concocts a potion mixing ¼ teaspoon turmeric and ½ teaspoon each of crushed cardamom seeds, licorice root, and ginger in a cup of organic milk. After bringing the ingredients to a boil, he pours the liquid into a cup, stirring in ½ tablespoon of ghee, the fat of which "helps transport the medicinal herbs to the tiny strota in the blood system." I ask him if I can add honey, and he replies, "Honey turns toxic when heated. Use jaggery to sweeten hot drinks." The first sip is blech. But by the bottom of the cup I can see Starbucks going out of business. Watching Cameron pack up his wares, I think, No, don't leave yet! But his work is done here. And his Spanish supermodel girlfriend is waiting for him at home. Just as I am about to go all Kathy Bates in Misery on him, he promises me he will be virtually in my life forever via his website, Camerongoodhealth.com, where I can find ayurvedic guidance and videos of yoga exercises. He gives me a hug and a diet tip: "You cannot eat anything you want to eat, and you can eat everything you don't want to eat." Then he adds, "It's better to eat a little of something that's not good for you than a lot of something that is." That I can live with.

I stare out the open window, watching him hail a cab. He looks up and calls to me: "I was just thinking, I should have given you an enema." Shocked, I yell back, "My place or yours?"

Basti oil enemas are believed to relieve 80 percent of air imbalance ailments, which in my case would include anxiety and insomnia and dryness in the body. Simply put, my agni is off because my malas turned ama, which squashed my ojas, which has left my prana depleted.

"If you had more problems," Cameron says two days later, heating sesame oil over his stove, "I'd add some medicinal herbs to this." Just how does he get that where it needs to go? "A medical syringe." How big is the syringe? "Well," he says, "that depends on whether you're naughty or you're nice." Cameron made a joke! (If he didn't, I'm in big trouble.) Unlike water enemas, which induce a thunderous evacuation, the ayurvedic variety uses a small amount of fluid (less than a cup) that can be held internally until you decide you want to go. (For me that meant waiting until I got home. I do, after all, have my pride.)

After massaging marma points in my head and stomach, Cameron instructs me to turn onto my side. Right about now I'm fighting a flight response. But his utterly professional practitioner's composure, and the fact that I have, in a way, already slept with him, keep me from bailing.

Over in a minute and "quite uneventful" as Cameron puts it, the process has cleared my passage to India. "He gave you an M&M-ema!" says my friend Michael, referring to my favorite food group. But chocolate is no longer on the menu. Caffeine is off too. A month after regaining balance, my fingernails are growing like crazy, I have no more breast tenderness, and I've stopped turning into a werewolf at midnight.

Seriously, my head, my heart, my body do feel lighter. My brother, Paul, an MD in Washington, DC, comes to visit and notes the new me immediately. When I tell him about Cameron, he's not surprised I feel so much better, aside from the ways Cameron changed my lifestyle (diet, meditation, sleep). "You should read Distinction, by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu," Paul says. "He points out that such singular experiences as having an Adonis live with you and administer rare, arcane medical practices serve an important function in distinguishing the patient as being of a certain status. This, in combination with Cameron's beauty, boosts the placebo effect. It's true in mainstream medicine too—the better looking the doctor, or seeing someone considered to be at the top in his field, the greater the placebo effect. The bottom line is, Cameron pulled you out of the black hole."

I woke up and looked out my window today, and seeing the sun, the people, all the life outside was enough to make me go for a walk in Central Park. "The only way you can change the world is by changing yourself," Cameron says. Look how he changed. I'm inspired and on a new path to becoming the Holly Lama.